


Enough

by evadne



Series: Portions of Happiness [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, F/F, Femslash, Femslash February
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-08
Updated: 2013-02-08
Packaged: 2017-11-28 15:11:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/675819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evadne/pseuds/evadne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Molly is clever and kind and surprising, and Sally’s never got this close to anyone this quickly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Enough

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not entirely sure what happened. When I wrote _Easy as O,A,B_ I had at the back of my mind that I might write two porny sequels: one Molly/Irene and one Molly/Sally. This...is not porn. This is just the end of _Easy as O,A,B_ from Sally's point of view. But this fic has got me thinking that there's a lot more to explore in this relationship/'verse, so there may be more sequels. Possibly even with smut.
> 
> I've put this in the Femslash February collection but putting in a sequel to an older fic does feel a bit like cheating, so I can remove it if anyone has any objection.

‘So shae doesn’t want to be exclusive?’ Sally says, and then curses herself slightly for being relieved. It doesn’t make the slightest difference whether Molly has an exclusive a-friend or not, because Molly is straight, and regards Sally as a lovely supportive best friend with no sexual appeal at all.

 

Or at least – so Sally says to herself, every time they’re together, because otherwise she’d go insane. But she does wonder sometimes. Because Molly’s lain on Sally’s sofa eating ice cream and saying miserably that no one will ever want her because she’s a freak enough times that Sally knows how much Molly just wants to be – normal? Is that the right word? Perhaps not. _Acceptable_ might be a better one. Acceptable, and therefore accepted.

 

And with all of that going on in Molly’s head, Sally does wonder whether a flicker of crossexuality would ever be allowed to enter. Molly’s clearly predominantly attracted to alphas, but – she might be a little bit multisexual, and not even know. It’s possible.

 

That doesn’t mean, of course, that she’d be attracted to Sally.

 

‘Nah,’ Molly says. ‘I don’t think it’s that sort of relationship. I mean, I don’t think it’s – casual, exactly, shae certainly wasn’t keen on that word, and it’s been pretty intense, but...I think it’s mostly sex. Though shae did give me this whole speech about how marvellous I am because I’m good at pretending not to have been crying.’

 

‘’Course you’re marvellous,’ Sally says. ‘Shae’d have to be an idiot not to see that.’

 

Molly smiles at her, and while ordinarily Molly smiling is an excellent thing to happen, Sally’s not overly fond of this one. Molly shouldn’t smile incredulously at people thinking she’s marvellous, shouldn’t raise her eyebrows slightly like that as if to say _don’t be ridiculous_.

 

‘Shae said a lot of weird things, actually,’ Molly goes on. ‘Like – I said I wanted a serious relationship, and I didn’t mind whether it was exclusive but what if I ended up going out with someone who _did_ mind – and shae said something like, “Don’t worry about that, the answer’s right in front of you”.’

 

Sally freezes. She stands very still, and tries to think. Is it possible that Molly knows someone else who adores her, who would love to be in a relationship with her and wouldn’t be fussed about monogamy? It seems...unlikely. And Irene had looked at Sally after she first crossed through Molly’s window, measuring her up. When Molly went to make tea, Irene and Sally had had a strange, fraught conversation, which seemed loaded with unspoken meaning. Irene, undoubtedly, knows.

 

Her tongue feels heavy, her mouth dry. She’s going to have to say something. If she doesn’t, Irene will, and Sally cannot bear the thought of that. And she’s always told herself she ought to say something, ought to risk it. But the risk isn’t a slight one. This friendship is the best thing to happen to her in a long time. Molly is – sweet, and considerate, though with a wholly unexpected steel core. She makes Sally laugh with regularity, she cares a great deal about a great many things, and she has excellent taste in ice cream.

 

Sally’s never really wasted much time worrying about her own attractiveness. She knows she’s capable of being good company, of being funny and interesting, when she wants to be, and isn’t too tired. She gets too many stares when she wears a strappy top not to know that she’s physically attractive to a fair number of people.  But somehow, around Molly – shy, awkward, always-polite Molly, who shouldn’t be frightening or threatening at all – all of that goes out the window.

 

It’s partly, of course, that Molly is an omega, and while that makes her marginally less unattainable than if she were an alpha, Sally’s still dealing with a lifetime of being told that betas and omegas just don’t work together. The subtext, echoing everywhere she went though never fully verbalised, was always: _betas aren’t good enough_.

 

And on top of that there’s just the fact that Molly is clever and kind and surprising, and that Sally’s never got this close to anyone this quickly. They’ve known each other less than a year, but Molly is unquestionably her best friend. And somehow, even though Sally’s always nervous around her, and it always a feels a bit like the first time she ever had a crush on someone, she doesn’t feel the need to show off, to be the shiniest, fieriest version of herself she can be. She doesn’t _have_ to work at being funny and interesting every second around Molly, because Molly seems to find her funny and interesting even when she doesn’t try. It’s – slightly intoxicating.

 

Molly’s looking at Sally in a way which suggests she’s been quiet too long. So Sally does the only thing she can think of. She says, ‘What a fucking tosser,’ because she really _hates_ Irene Adler right now and Molly ought to know that, and then she steps forward, and she plants a kiss on Molly’s lips.

 

Molly, understandably, looks a little astonished. She doesn’t move or react, doesn’t say anything except, ‘Er’.

 

Sally tries not to panic. God, why is this so hard? When she’d first felt a flicker of attraction to Pete Anderson she’d marched up to him and told him so, told him with a half-smile and a joke, got straight the point. She always spoke in short sentences with Pete, put something sharp and clever in every one. He was much harder work to talk to than Molly, and she showed off a lot more, but – in some respects, things were definitely easier. There was never any blinding terror.

 

‘Shae meant me,’ Sally says, aware that this is a somewhat poor explanation. ‘At least, I’m pretty sure shae did. Shae’s far too much like Sherlock, I assume shae also knows way too fucking much about everything.’

 

Molly looks even more at sea. ‘Meant you – what?’ she says. Sally feels a burst of frustration. Is it _really_ that hard for Molly to conceive of attraction between them, even one-way? 

 

She doesn’t really want to explain properly. But she’s started now. The only route is forward. So she says, keeping her voice as steady as she can, ‘I fancy you. Always have. It never seemed the right time to tell you, and I like us hanging out, being friends, so. But then – it’s not as if you’d ever consider it yourself, without someone else suggesting it – the idea of, of us, I mean. So I just thought maybe I had better say something, after all. I wouldn't have wanted Irene telling you first, either.'

 

There. Not bad at all. A little ramblier, a little more disjointed than her usual style. But she’s never had to put on a front for Molly before and now seems like a bad time to start. For better or worse, she’s going to have to be herself, with any lack of smoothness, any obvious anxiety, that goes with that.

 

‘I – I like you more than anyone else I know,’ Molly says. ‘But you know I’m straight. I’ve never been – crossexual at all really.’

 

This is a turning point, Sally knows. She could drop it. Could say, ‘I know that, I just wanted to get it off my chest. Ice cream?’ Their friendship would stay intact. Maybe a little more awkwardness, but Molly gets over things fast, and would certainly understand what it’s like to fancy someone who doesn’t like you back. (And it says a lot about Molly’s redeeming qualities that Sally can actually be attracted to someone with a crush on _Sherlock_ , for Christ’s sake.)

 

And yet. Molly pays so much attention to everyone around her, and so little to herself.  She said _never been crossexual_ so glibly, so automatically, but – would she know? Really, really know? Does she watch herself as thoughtfully as Sally watches her?

 

‘I know,’ Sally says, slowly.  ‘And I wouldn’t have said anything, but –‘ she pauses. She wants, very badly, to get this right. ‘You get so worked up about not being a normal omega. You don’t like clothing that shows off your hips, you don’t like o pronouns, and you think your sex drive’s too high and that you aren't passive enough. And all of that bothers you, a lot. Are you sure you haven’t just decided that you have to be straight because at least then you’d have one bit of normality down?’

 

There. She’s said it now. Her pet theory, the one she’s tried not to treasure or think about, because if it isn’t true, then – well, then things go on as they are, and that’s not so terrible. Sally knows how to cope with a blow, to keep going, to make the best of things. But sometimes she gets sick of doing that all the time. She put up with Sherlock interfering with crime scenes for two years before she started to jab back; turns out that with this she couldn’t last quite so long.

 

‘I never thought about it,’ Molly says, which Sally already knows. ‘I was always attracted to alphas – uh, an inconvenient amount, sometimes.’ Sally grins; that’s certainly true. Molly goes on - ‘So I never really had to worry about – I just, I guess I never really let my mind go there.’

 

Sally’s heart beats a little faster, because her theory is holding up so far. ‘Yeah,’ she says, starting now to fail to keep her breaths perfectly even. ‘That’s what I thought.’

 

'I prefer sex out of heat,’ Molly says slowly. ‘And I’ve never been that fussed about whether an alpha’s in rut or not, though obviously they always mostly wanted to do it when they were. So I suppose -  I suppose maybe it wouldn't matter, really.'

 

Sally swallows. The world seems suddenly to be moving too fast. ‘OK,’ she manages to get out. And then, because she has to know what Molly is thinking, needs her to continue: ‘So - ?’

 

‘The sex with Irene was amazing,’ Molly says. ‘I don’t want that to stop.’

 

For a moment, Sally is puzzled, wondering why Molly would bring up Irene again, just when they were finally talking about _them,_ about Molly-and-Sally. But then she realises what Molly’s getting at, and her heart actually seems to miss a beat.

 

‘It wouldn’t have to,’ she says. ‘That’s not something that’s ever been a problem for me.’

 

She looks hard at Molly to ensure she didn’t misunderstand, but Molly’s nodding. So that was it, then. Molly really was saying _I need to inform you of my current commitments so that you’re aware of everything before we enter into a relationship_. It seems impossible. But the evidence is pretty compelling.

 

But Sally has to make sure. So she adds, ‘And – Molly, you realise that last week we met up three nights and the week before that it was four? We’re practically dating already.’

 

Molly smiles with impossible sweetness at this, and she doesn’t say, _What? No, no, I’m so sorry, you’ve got the wrong idea, I didn’t mean us dating._ Strengthened by this, Sally smiles back, a tighter, wryer smile than Molly’s, and goes on: ‘God, I asked you out the first time we met, you just didn’t notice. I thought we _were_ dating for a week before the penny dropped.’

 

She remembers that well. Molly showed up at a crime scene having been manipulated into running errands for Sherlock. She looked fragile and unhappy and she ranted about Sherlock in a way that Sally could already tell wasn’t typical for her. Whatever Sherlock has to say about Sally’s abilities, she is a police officer, and she knows something about reading people.

 

Not that summing people up in a glance is ever really possible. You can’t know someone from a moment looking at them – that, Sally firmly believes, and she believes too that Sherlock flattens humanity by assuming that hae can understand it that easily. Hae looks at people and sees probabilities, and every quirk is categorised and dismissed. When hae sees Sally, hae sees _beta, type 2, black, early thirties,_ and an inventory list of relevant personality traits and their likely origins. Once, she’d thought hae was capable of murder, because how could anybody who looked at the world that way think that individual lives mattered? That was before John Watson appeared, of course. Things changed then. Not that Sherlock’s any less obnoxious – not in the slightest, and certainly not to Sally – but as vile as hae frequently is to John, Sherlock does seem to recognise haim as a unique individual consciousness, and as important. Sally doesn’t care much about this on her own behalf, because Sherlock still doesn’t see _her_ as a real breathing creature that’s more than the sum of her terribly predictable parts. But Molly cares about Sherlock, and so Sally has to give haim a passing thought out of concern for her.

 

Though Molly’s been talking a lot less about Sherlock recently. And Sally dares to hope a little that perhaps Molly’s getting over haim, recognising him for the wanker hae is. That day they’d met Molly had been in _pieces_ over haim – so much so that when Sally asked her for a drink Molly had spent the entire time talking about haim further – and she hasn’t got that bad in a long time. It hadn’t exactly been ideal first date behaviour, and normally Sally would have written off anyone who did that. But Molly had been strangely appealing: agonisingly self-aware, she’d apologised repeatedly in between going on about Sherlock and was clearly exasperated herself for caring about haim at all. It had intrigued Sally enough to ask for a second date, and on that she’d found Molly capable of far more interesting conversation. It wasn’t until their third date that Sally realised they weren’t dating at all.

 

And that changed nothing, Sally realises. And thinks perhaps Molly should know this too: ‘But the thing is,’ she says, ‘nothing about what we were doing actually changed when I realised we weren’t.’ _We’re in a relationship already, aren’t we?_ she thinks. _And I didn’t notice. Wouldn’t Sherlock find that hilarious? Apparently my observation is kind of shit when it comes to certain things after all._

The only thing, really, that she and Molly aren’t doing, is having sex. Which must be the area Molly’s most concerned about. Sally has no idea what sex is like for alphas and omegas, but it sounds – full-on. Beta sex is generally considered second-rate, lacking the power and the rush of alpha/omega sex. Sally _wants_ to fuck Molly, almost-thinks about it all the time, has to stop herself constantly. But that may not be something Molly wants, and so Sally makes herself say: ‘We don’t even have to have sex if you don’t want to –‘

 

She intends to say more, explain that cuddling and verbal recognition of the fact that they’re in a romantic relationship would be, yes, perhaps less than she wants, but more than she ever expected to get. But then Molly says, with deliberate nonchalance that is maddening but also slightly adorable: ‘Well, it’d be worth a try, wouldn’t it?’

 

Sally gulps, stares at her, but doesn’t get a chance to say anything before Molly’s phone beeps. Molly reads her text, then looks up at Sally, and says, ‘This has been a weird week.’

 

Sally finds her voice. ‘You mean that?’ she says. It comes out quieter than she intended, but Molly hears, because she starts saying things that make no sense at all until Sally realises she’s talking about how she definitely did mean that it had been a weird week.

 

Dear God, Molly’s the most infuriating person on the planet. Sally feels a warm rush of affection. ‘Not _that_ ,’ she says. ‘ What you said before. You want to try – sleeping with me?’

 

Molly looks at her for so long Sally almost loses her nerve, but then – then Molly starts talking, and she says things Sally doesn’t even know how to process. When she doesn’t think she can take hearing any more before her heart bursts out of her chest, she kisses Molly, because it seems she’s allowed to kiss Molly now and it’s suddenly clear how ridiculous it would be to spend another second not doing so.

 

The kissing is so much that it’s almost painful, but Sally also knows she can’t get enough, that she’ll need more and more of this. She lets a hand settle on the back of Molly’s hair, feels the shape of Molly’s lips beneath her own.

 

She is terrified, utterly terrified of everything she suddenly has to lose. She’s never entered into a relationship caring this much already. And she knows there are things to be discussed, that there’s no getting away from the fact that she’s a beta. But, for right now, Sally leans in closer, holds their bodies together, and kisses Molly till it’s impossible to think at all.


End file.
